Fillowite

Fillowite was named in honor of Abijah N. Fillow (1822–1895), Branchville, Connecticut. (Anthony et al., 2000)

In the 1880 US Census, he was listed as a "depot agent", married, age 57 and living at: Ridgefield, Fairfield, Connecticut.

He was born 24 Oct. 1822, son of Joseph (1801-1867) and Laura (Jelliff) Fillow. He was married, 27 Oct. 1844, to Jane Rebecca Jelliff. They lived in Branchville and had one child: Orrin, born 27 April 1847, d. 20 July 1863. (Van Hoosear,1888)

The following is quoted from Van Hoosear (1888):

"Abijah for many years acted as ticket agent for the Danbury & Norwalk R. R. Co. (but being appointed superintendent of the Feldspar and Quartz mine which he sold to the Union Porcelain Works of Greenpoint, N. Y.), he withdrew the R. R. agency and supervised the Co.'s interest. It is this mine in which Prof. Brush and Dany [sic] of Yale college have found so much interest in mineralogy (new minerals) we believe they have discovered 7 new ones. Columbaite [sic] (after Columbus), Reddingite (after the town in which the mine is situated), Dicksonite [sic] (after a Rev. who helped to bring the mine to notice), Fairfieldite (Fairfield Co.), Fillowite (after the original owner who reserved the right to Yale Coll. for any mineral for the study of science). The Co. presented Mr. Fillow with an elegant dinner set valued at $75, decorated with brilliant colors, gold band and also a tea set, both made from material from this mine."


Ref:

Van Hoosear. D. H. (1888). The Fillow, Philo, and Philleo Genealogy: A Record of the Descendants of John Fillow, A Huguenot Refugee From France. (Albany NY: J. Munsell's Sons)

- Anthony, John W. et al. (2000) Handbook of Mineralogy, Vol. 4, (Mineralogical Society of America, Chantilly, VA 20151-1110, USA. [www.handbookofmineralogy.org]).

- 1880 United States Census (online)

Research by Ronald Januzzi (1997) does establish that his first name should be spelled "Abijah", so this should be corrected on the fillowite mineral page. Sadly he could not find a picture of him, but there is a photo of his gravestone in Branchville.

Januzzi, Ronald E. (1997): The Branchville Quarry and the Dickinson/Fillow Controversy. The Mineralogical Press, Danbury, Connecticut.

Here is a pic

Fantastic photo. Where did it come from?

Best Wishes, Van King

An old merchant guide.....from Danbury CT

If you can provide a larger image file, I can greatly improve the output image for Mindat.
n e w r y q s @ g m a i l . c o m.
If you only have a screen capture from google books, I can use certain techniques to get a larger screen capture file. What is the book's exact title?

Best Wishes, Van King

It is not on google books, its an old merchant guide my father in law has at his house, i took a picture of it wiht my cell phone...i can try to get a larger image for you

Van:
Abijah Fillow's first name is still misspelled on the Fillowite mineral home page. He died on Nov. 10, 1895, according to his gravestone in Branchville.

Dear Harold, Typo is fixed
Dear Rob, If you can use a scanner at 1200 dpi for the Fillow image, I can process the photo and improve the appearance.

Best Wishes, Van King

Hi Van:
Thanks. I went to Yale yesterday and examined a whole bunch of the Branchville minerals there. Even with that material, it is visually difficult to distinguish some things apart, such as hureaulite and reddingite. There are some Brush and Dana labels with question marks after some mineral IDs! I made some revisions to the Branchville mindat page as a result of that inspection. I am 100% confident that the two eosphorite photos remaining there are correct - I saw exactly the same type material, complete with encrusting quartz and apatite. I changed some other eosphorite photos to triploidite now that I've seen more of that latter mineral. I moved the photo of the micro radiating spray of red crystals [www.mindat.org] to the Dunton mine after seeing some specimens friends collected there and there is no Yale material like it. On the same piece was a bunch of yellow apparent hydroxylapatite, photos [www.mindat.org] of which I also moved to Dunton. Please take a look at these as I am not so much a Maine locality expert.
I took some photos at Yale, but because Yale retains the copyright I cant post them to mindat. I can use them in a presentation I and Ted Johnson are working on.
In related Branchville items, I posted a photo and bio of Rev. Dickinson in this messageboard thread for use on the dickinsonite mineral pages. [www.mindat.org]

For various Branchville type mineral mindat pages, the following text can be added:

Eosphorite: Named by George Brush and Edward Dana in 1878...
Dickinsonite: Named by George Brush and Edward Dana in 1878...
Triploidite: Named by George Brush and Edward Dana in 1878...
Reddingite: Named by George Brush and Edward Dana in 1878 for Redding, Connecticut, USA "the town in which the [type] locality is situated". (Not for the town hosting the village of Branchville, which is actually in Ridgefield, the pegmatite is in Redding just across the border.)
Fairfieldite: Named by George Brush and Edward Dana in 1879...

Thanks
Fritz